The intercom croaked anxiously and unintelligibly.
Miss Hope permitted herself a slight gesture of impatience. ‘Yes, I have examined their credentials, Headmaster, and no, they are not carrying offensive weapons of any kind.’ She switched off and got to her feet. ‘This way, gentlemen.’
Dover and MacGregor, intrigued but not in view of Miss Hope’s supremely composed manner liking to comment, followed her obediently across the office to a communicating door largely labelled: ‘PRIVATE! NO ENTRY!! KEEP OUT!!! THIS MEANS YOU !!!!’
Miss Hope raised a capable looking hand and knocked. Two loud knocks. A pause. Two soft knocks. Another pause. Three loud knocks in rapid succession.
There was a short wait and then came the sound of chains being rattled, keys being turned and bolts being withdrawn. The door opened and Miss Hope returned to her desk. Dover and MacGregor entered the inner sanctum.
‘Do, please, sit down!’ The Headmaster, having conscientiously re-chained, re-locked and re-bolted his door, blocked it for good measure with a heavy filing cabinet before scurrying back for cover behind his desk.
Dover regarded the two wooden chairs with some disapproval but, since that was all there was, he moved one nearer to the desk and prepared to deposit his weary bones on it. Or, at least, he tried to move it. Both chairs were, as it happens, securely bolted to the floor.
‘A Senior Geography teacher in Crawley,’ explained the Headmaster with a death’s head grin, ‘had his skull fractured the other day by an umbrella stand. One can’t take too many precautions. Now’ – nervously he realigned the pick-axe handle with the edge of his blotter – ‘I understand you want some information about an ex-pupil of ours called Pearl Wallace?’
MacGregor took his eyes away from the windows which were well protected with fine-mesh chicken wire and tried to concentrate on the enquiries he was being paid to make. ‘Do you recognize this girl, sir?’
The Headmaster cringed away instinctively as MacGregor got up to pass his photograph of the dead girl across the desk. ‘No,’ he said quickly, ‘I don’t.’
‘But you’ve hardly looked at it, sir!’ MacGregor spoke sharply.
‘I don’t have to, sergeant. I have nearly two thousand pupils in my care. They are continually changing and I’ve so managed things that nowadays I hardly ever see any of them. The whole art of being the head of a comprehensive school,’ he added sententiously, ‘is delegation. I have succeeded in delegating practically everything, except the over-all responsibility, of course, and the paperwork. What,’ he asked as he wiped the palms of his hands on a large white handkerchief, ‘is the point of having a staff of seventy if you don’t trust them, eh?’
Dover was looking very boot-faced. He didn’t relish the prospect of having to move again when he’d only just got settled. ‘There must be somebody who can tell us about the bloody girl.’
The Headmaster winced visibly at the brusqueness of this remark. ‘Oh, I have all the information here, all right,’ he said, removing the cosh which he had been using as a paperweight and picking up a bright pink folder. ‘This is Pearl Wallace’s file. Everything we know about her is in here.’
Dover pouted discontentedly. He was allergic to paper. ‘We were looking for more of the personal touch,’ he grumbled. ‘Like somebody who knew her and could fill us in about what sort of a kid she was.’
‘Not a hope!’ The Headmaster shook his head firmly. ‘It’s two years since she left and all her classroom contemporaries will have departed, too. And if there’s one thing my teaching staff are it’s uninvolved. It might be different if the girl had made her mark in some way or another. If she’d been very good or very bad. Those are the ones who tend to stick in the memory, however much one tries to forget them. But Pearl’ – he looked at the cover of the folder for the surname – ‘Pearl Wallace was nondescript to the point of vanishing, one might say. She was outstanding only in being perfectly average. Or’ – he rifled professionally through the papers – ‘just a little below average, if anything.’
‘Could I have a look, sir?’ MacGregor stretched out his hand slowly so as not to cause undue alarm and panic.
‘Certainly not!’ The Headmaster clutched the file possessively to his chest. ‘These records are highly confidential.’
‘We can easily get the necessary authorization, sir,’ said MacGregor in a bored voice. Past experience had taught him that such threats usually did the trick.
But the Headmaster of Mottrell Comprehensive was made of sterner stuff. He had not devoted twelve years of his life to these records for nothing. ‘In that case, sergeant,’ he responded loftily, ‘I suggest you go ahead and get it. Until such time as you do, these documents do not leave my hands.’
It was Dover who found a way out of the impasse. ‘Maybe you could read us out a few bits,’ he said, more reasonably and more understanding than was his wont, but still determined not to shift for at least the next half hour.
The Headmaster cautiously agreed that such a course of action might be possible. ‘What sort of thing did you want to know? She got a prize for Scriptural Knowledge in her first year here, and she sprained a finger playing netball when she was in III(d). Not badly, I’m glad to say, as the injury was dealt with by our own Sick Bay.’
Dover slumped in his chair. ‘What about boyfriends?’ He glanced across at MacGregor and snapped his fingers. That was his charming way of indicating that he wanted a cigarette.
There was
